{"id":1273,"date":"2007-09-03T14:35:28","date_gmt":"2007-09-03T19:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1273"},"modified":"2007-09-04T08:37:28","modified_gmt":"2007-09-04T13:37:28","slug":"what-if-they-had-a-riot-and-nobody-came","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1273","title":{"rendered":"What If They Had A Riot, And Nobody Came?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When you&#8217;re a Republican in Saint Paul, you get used to feeling like a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Battle_of_Suomussalmi\">Finn<\/a> at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.raatteenportti.fi\/historyeng.html\">Suomussalmi<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a rare thing indeed when the good guys outnumber the left at much of anything in this town.<\/p>\n<p>Today was the <em>last <\/em>day I expected to be one of them.<\/p>\n<p>The Anarkids &#8211; the various arrested adolescents who are planning on bringing violence to the Republican National Convention next year &#8211; had a &#8220;News Conference&#8221; at the Capitol at 11:30 today.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Present were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Camera crews from two cable access outlets and WCCO TV.<\/li>\n<li>A reporter from Minnesota Public Radio (indeed, the same one I talked with on Friday).<\/li>\n<li>Lassie from Freedom Dogs<\/li>\n<li>Leo from Pscychmeister&#8217;s Ice Palace<\/li>\n<li>Jamie Delton, blogger and local GOP activist.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?hl=en&#038;q=%22Sandra+Brown-Rivers%22&#038;btnG=Search\">Sandra Brown-Rivers<\/a>, spokesperson for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rncwelcomingcommittee.org\/\">RNC Welcoming Committee<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Three or four anarkids.\u00a0 One of them drove&#8230;(wait for it&#8230;wait for it&#8230;) a Prius &#8211; brand new and mighty expensive, for a bunch of kids who reject capitalism and money.\u00a0 It was plastered with bumperstickers.<\/li>\n<li>Myself.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So &#8211; of the 15 (I counted &#8217;em) people at the &#8220;news conference&#8221;, both the news media <em>and <\/em>the GOP presence were greater than the Anarkids!<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Brown-Rivers &#8211; a short woman who looked either frumpily perky or perkily frumpy &#8211; did a lengthy soundcheck, looking hot and sticky and uncomfortable in her dark,\u00a0dirty-looking standard-issue anarkid-wear duds,\u00a0and sounding tentative behind the microphone, at the bottom of the capitol steps.\u00a0 Then she cleared her throat, and as camera crews and the cute redhead reporter from WCCO tried to get her name for attribution, replied &#8220;We&#8217;re not taking questions&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No, we&#8217;d like to get your title&#8221;, replied one of the camera guys, who I suspect must have been wondering what he did to piss off his assignment editor.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, after an extended buildup, Ms. Brown-Rivers read the following statement, word for word (barring a few flubs which I won&#8217;t bother to re-create):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Thank you, ladies, gentlemen, and otherly-gendered of the press, for joining us on this, most glorious of occasions.\u00a0 This Labor day weekend, anarchists and anti-authoritarians from every city, every town, every hamlest, every last Hooverville of this great nation convened a grand congress.\u00a0 Together, we have magicked into being a detailed plan, worthy of note, to receive the Republican National Convention. Like many a good plan, it is broad in scope, aimed an othering less than complete controll (!!) of this hallowed turf, our fair city.\u00a0 Today, declare our first victory, having a chieved a complete shutdown of government services citywide.\u00a0 This we have accomplished whilst wading in the dark tide of the State and their attempts to crush us on the first even of our festivities, when the gentle flesh of our comrades was met with hard metal and penetrating volts by members of the self-appointed police force &#8211; a foreshadowing glimpse.\u00a0 Yet here we stand, and our chariots ride on.\u00a0 Much as a phoenix rises from its own ashes, we admist that tomorrow the city will function anew.\u00a0 But know this:\u00a0 its hegemony, like all but the truest of loves, is fleeting, ephemeral.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I thought about fisking it &#8211; but this may be the most perfectly self-fisking statement in the history of public oratory (although other bloggers may feel free to go for it!).<\/p>\n<p>Ms Brown-Rivers stalked off the steps, leaving the reporters looking mildly pissed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And so the season begins!<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->So &#8211; did anyone manage to make it to the Jackpine Community Center to see what the rest of the &#8220;anarchist organization&#8221; was doing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you&#8217;re a Republican in Saint Paul, you get used to feeling like a Finn at Suomussalmi.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a rare thing indeed when the good guys outnumber the left at much of anything in this town. Today was the last day I expected to be one of them. The Anarkids &#8211; the various arrested adolescents [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-days-of-adolescent-rage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}